Earlier this year, Microsoft announced it would be acquiring GitHub, one of the most prominent and active software development platforms. This move was an effort on Microsoft’s part to streamline the modern development lifecycle and will allow many teams to accelerate and participate in enterprise-level use of the platform.
This seems a bit strange on the outside, considering the company already owns and maintains the Microsoft Azure Cloud Server computing platform. They are both similar, with overlapping features and support. Of course, it is important to note they are also different in many ways – so much that businesses may still have to choose between the two.
What are these platforms used for currently? What makes them similar and what makes them different? How do they apply to the average business?
What Is GitHub?
GitHub is an open-source, free-to-use public repository for a great deal of web-based development projects. It provides developers with a distributed revision control system, source code management or SCM tools, and an incredibly experienced and established community. Although it is primarily free, there is a paid subscription for teams and developers that intend to work across multiple repositories and projects.
Like Azure, the company also offers business and enterprise cloud solutions for handling authentication and permissions for various infrastructure solutions.
What Is Azure Cloud Server?
Microsoft Azure and the cloud computing solutions are a series of web-based tools that allow developers to create, manage, distribute and modify a variety of applications. The apps can be leveraged across enterprise, mobile, web and Internet of Things (IoT) platforms and devices.
It is similar to GitHub in regards to how code and repositories are handled, albeit the platform is not public nor is it open source. Furthermore, Azure is meant for business and enterprise audiences as opposed to more general demographics. Comparatively, GitHub can be leveraged by everyone from independent, single developers to incredibly large teams and organizations.
How Are They Similar?
Most would agree that these two platforms are remarkably dissimilar operatively. One is for general and mainstream use, while the other is for enterprise.
However, they are both meant to be software development maintenance and distribution solutions for the modern, mobile and web-based age. Both platforms include a variety of features designed to improve the development lifecycle, along with testing and migration solutions.
GitHub, for example, allows developers to track bugs and coding issues, complete with social and community tools for this. Users can submit a ticket, and developers can prioritize their response and actions based on incoming claims. Microsoft Azure includes similar tools, but they’re tailored more for enterprise applications and infrastructure.
Both platforms also have a long list of integrations, which is a term that refers to third-party compatibility and support. GitHub supports platforms such as Amazon, Slack, Codeship, ZenHub, Rollbar, Hound and many others. Azure, on the other hand, supports platforms like OpsGenie, Dropbox, Cube, Asset Bank and KISSFLOW, among many others.
Which One Is Ideal for Business?
Cloud computing and virtualization professionals and companies will benefit the most from both platforms, due to their web-oriented structure. They are fundamentally built to allow for collaborative code development, especially GitHub with its social and community support structure.
While GitHub definitely takes a more crowdsourced and public approach to collaborative development, Azure Cloud Server keeps things more locked down, with enterprise and internal solutions.
Closer to deployment and distribution – when you’ve reached the end of the development lifecycle – Azure Cloud Server offers more support. It includes robust debugging tools, useful error and issue alerts, and a vast selection of deployment opportunities – particularly through third-party solutions. You could argue that Azure is more about pushing code into the wild, whereas GitHub is about actively developing a project.
Either way, both are excellent solutions for any business looking to manage or distribute their code and applications via web-based platforms.
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About the Author
Kayla Matthews is a tech-loving blogger who writes and edits ProductivityBytes.com. Follow her on Twitter @productibytes to read all of her latest posts!
